"To mark the International Year of Forests, and in editorial partnership with IUCN’s Commission on Education and Communication (CEC), this special full-colour issue of arborvitae takes a critical yet constructive look at how forest values are being communicated to non-foresters. One theme that runs through several articles is the need to recognize and respond to people’s emotional connections to forests; another is the powerful impact of photographs to inspire readers to act on written messages. With these points in mind, we invite you to try an exercise in ‘relating to your audience’ and look at the colour photos on the centre pages of this issue using your heart rather than your head, to see what they say to you."

Stewart Maginnis, Head of IUCN's Forest Conversation Programme

and

Keith Wheeler, Chair of IUCN's Commission on Education and Communication

Contents

2 Editorial

3 International initiative: International Year of Forests

4-7 Forests: an image problem? What is a forest? How to get a child to love a forest? How sexy

are forests?

8-9 Images for forest conservation

10 Perspective: Love not loss

11 Learning: Web-based learning for forestry professionals

12-15 Communications cases: Communicating biodiversity to private forest owners in Estonia, Calling attention to Africa’s bright side, When a spotlight is needed, A communications success story from the International Year of Biodiversity